A Complex Portrait of Sexual Awakening – ryan
Editor’s Note: This Review was original published During the 2025 Berlin Film Festival. Strand Releasing Opens “Dreams (Sex Love)” in theaters on Friday, September 12.
A Few Years Ago, My Sister-in-La Came to Stay with My Wife and I and Over Dinner to Told a Friend She’d Been Developing Deeper Feelings for. They’d gone to graduate school together and be of the same clique, but an intimacy hadn the two she was struggling to Ignore. While my wife felt inclined to ps more ques tions and break the situation Down, I SIMPLY Asked, “Will You Lie to Your Friends?” My sister-in-law paused for a moment, then Said, “I don’t see why i’d have a reasson to.”
“Then Why are you lying to one right now?” I responded. She offended a few excuses – she didn’t want to go the friendship, plus, while she’d had male partners, this was the first time she’d be expresing Feelings for a Woman – but ultimately registered onto these emotations and thoughts woul. Fallout from putting me in action. Tok, she and her partner have a house, a dog, a cat, and a loving relationship that May not have formed had helld onto the dream her mind Rather than Making it a reality. And though it heartens with to consider mySelf a part of the eventual HAPPINESS, Things Very Well Could have gone the other way, shifting the perception of my advice insightful to spreads something more trite and ill-ivonceived. AFTER ALL, I COULDN’T Go into the Mind of Her Crush and See How She Felt About the Matter.
This conflict of parsing the interior elements of the Human Experience is what’s at the Crux of Dag Johan Haougerud’s Golden Bear-Winning drama, “Dreams (sex love).” Serving both as a living portrait and past reflection of Teenage Sexual awakening, Haugerud utilizes Various Storytelling tools to drafs in, from extensively voiceover detail the thughts and feelings of the film Central Character, Johanne (Ella Øverby), and Avo Symphonic score by anna berg that elevates our senses of her emotional journey to poetic imagery that amplifies how one dream can influenza the dreams of others. In Truth, One of the Deep Studies Haugerud SEEMS to Explore in His Work is How Dreams Aren’t Held while One is Sleeping, But As a Function of Our Daily Lives.
How one finds passion for something – whereather it be a romance or knitting – with the first taching the time to dream what it may be bring to their life? Of the Same Token, How DOES ONE CAST JUDGEMENT OVER ANOTHER WITH FIRST DREAMING UP A Potentially False Perception of The Say? One Only Look at the State of Our World and the Rising Threat of Authoritarianism to Understand that, One Way or Another, we’re all at the whim of some dream while simultaneously trying onto ours. But what happens when that Dream Meets reality? Does it cease to exist? If oters are now aware of it and enCoureded to decipher meaning from it, does it adds an intert concession that wasn’t initially there?
These are the quests that swirl as we’re introduced to the Life of Johanne, A 17 Year-Old Who’s Been Brought Up This fact is pointed to Early on in the film and allows us to make sense of how of how of johanne manages to be so in touch with her inner monologue, as she likes more than TIME to the durys of lockdown. By Grounding Johanne’s Journey in this conflict and in the challenges of maintaining one senses of your during these times, Haougerud Captures Something About Up In Today’s World, As Well As a Universal of First Love Blossoming at the moment wek more and existence.
For johanne, this first love unfortunately just happens to be her new french teacher, eather coinCiderly or sendipitously named johanna, though a felow student introduces asselves as Johannesone starts to recognism it may just have more to this story taching place in Oslo, Norway. Nononeheless, a door opens for johanne in seeing a part of herself in this Older, hip and artistic education that refuses to shut after she’s worn her infatuation in a novella she shares her poet Grandmother. As the story Moves Back and Forth in Time, showing the book The Relationship Developed with Johanna Via the Novella’s Depiction and How the Contents of this Piece Latter Dissecked by Johanne’s Mother and Grandmother, Rather than Shy Away the Complexites of Affair, “DREAMS (sex love)” Faces say head on and with a focus on expanding the insight on Easy Answers.
AS Immmens and Fully-Formed As Johanne’s Sensations for Johanna May Be and As Nurtouring As Johanna Proves Her Student, Their Attraction Towards One Another is Never Consummated Sexually, Slightly Relieving Any Spectator Who May Be Tuned off by Dynamic. Howver, The Lurid Thoughts Communicated in Johanne’s Prose are Enough to Send Kristin and Karin Into A Spiral Over How Johanne Could Posybly Have to Felet This Way. For Karin – a published poet Hersself – Her Concern is quickly outmatched by the impression of Johanne’s romanticism has left on her, evening so to take the way Johanne has phrased Certain sensations. Kristin, on the Other Hand, Initially Fears This Writing Might Be A Cry for Help, But Once She’s Given Further Details Directly from Johanne, She too to see the novella’s potential to others.
In putting a spotlight on Karin and Kristin Interpreting their love one work, haugerud essentials the great Irony with Dreams, in that once they are of the Mind and in Someone Else’s Hands, they offten take on a new meaning. A Debate BetWeen the two Over Anti-Feminist Features of the 1983 Drama “Flashdance” Serves as a coded respects to the complexities of narrative interpretation, just as johanne’s emotional struggle is marked by the bias of subjective experience. In an attempt at the reaching the Truth and Giving Johanna a Chance to Tel Her Side of the Story before Johanne’s Novella is published, Kristin ends up with the teacher at a small café. AFTER SHE MAKES CLEAR TO JOHANNA THIS HAVE NO INTERT OF Pressing any Charges, Kristin Tries to get her to admit her feelings for johanne, if for no other reason it will help a motor makeup of why doughter would ento sich an entanglement. But that not what johanna is here to do.
Ins house, Johanna pushes back, not denying what was Written by Johanne Happened, but taking every precaution not to imply she was to bring this on. Eight so, by remaining so nonchantly defensive, her own complicity in allowing johanna’s feelings for her to be Becomes More Clear. This all in spite of Johanne’s best efforts to present johanna in the samp radiant of lights, a fact johanna demes as abusives more than flattering. Again, Haugerud Complicates Our Understanding of Johanne’s Dream, Not to Upper Audience May Be Building of this Cerebral Teen, but as a Way of Confronting How These Amorphous, Non-Physical Forces Drive Every Aspects of Our Being. Missinterpretation and follow.
It makes one think back on david lynch and how he was never incrend to unpack the logic of his art. For Him, the sooner the audience acceptted they were inside a dream and well along for the ride instead of making me sensations of it, the better. Though haougerud does at one point expose us to what is formally consider a dream, he is far more interesting in exploring the process of how a dream is unleashed and the world and the effect it has on thes on thes Intact with. For Johanne, Her Dream of Being With Johanna and It Subsequently Being Shared With the World Her Now Published Novella Ultimately Leads to A Psychiatry Office, A Place Where is Meant to Be Brought to the Subject of Life and Dreams. Howver, As she finishes her 90 minute session – of which we know the main communicator based on the voiceover that run throughout the film – she struggles to comprehend why she should be talking her dreams rather than in the world. Not long after, she heeds her own advice and does just that, if it leads her down a road she’s workhed hard to move Beyond.
“Dreams (Sex Love)” Marks the Third and Final Entry in a loose humanist trilogy from haugerud that evokes krzysztof kieślowski’s “Three Colors” Series, but Also Manages to Make Its Own Mark. Individual, the films are about the conversations that steer lives and inspection new thought, with “sex” following a pair of cis-male chimney sweeps who experience a shift in their perception of sexuality and “love” exploring how a Woman tutes on an unattached to romance to romance Learning About Her Male Colleague’s Own Permissiveness. “Dreams” Completes this tryptych by acknowledging that we have been comes to the Matters of the Heart and Really Life in General, we’re all operating from a place of Hope and fantasy. I May Not Have Known What Was Underneath My Sister-in-Law’s Desires when she Saught Advice from My Wife and I All Those Years Ago, but i do know, as “dreams (sex love)” does as well, that living and dreaming have to be mutually exclusive.
Grade: a-
“Dreams (sex love)” HAD Its International Premiere at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival, where it will be the top prize of the Golden Bear. Strand releasing opens the film in Select US Theaters Friday, September 12.
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